{"id":3760,"date":"2024-05-29T16:06:51","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T20:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/?p=3760"},"modified":"2024-06-17T18:48:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T22:48:02","slug":"240529-the-walls-closed-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/240529-the-walls-closed-in\/","title":{"rendered":"240529-The walls closed in"},"content":{"rendered":"

I took my time leaving the campground in Jennersdorf on Wednesday. The sunny morning gave me time to hang stuff up to dry. According to the GPX track, Graz was 72 km away, and I’d taken 16 km off of that by bicycling in the rain on Tuesday. 102 km later I pulled into the hostel in Graz.<\/p>\n

As I rode toward Graz, I could see the walls of the valley in which I rode. I rapidly realized the track I followed wandered back and forth, mostly on tractor paths, although paved.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The track took me back and forth across the river and railroad tracks. I realized whoever created this GPX track had saved time by occasionally drawing perfectly straight lines where in reality the path wandered all over the place. As I rode up the valley, navigation added wandering back and forth along the contours of the hills. Every time I checked my odometer, Graz was always a bit farther than it should have been, because EV 14 spent so much time going back and forth. Still, I didn’t have a lot of options. Between the valley, the river, the highway, and the rail tracks, no valid path ran directly through everything. Fortunately there were signs at almost every turn, some simple, some complex.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The farther I rode, the closer the mountains got. Up until the 60 km mark, while torturously indirect, the route climbed slowly. After that the gradient started to kick in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Then I reached the head of the valley in La\u00dfnitzh\u00f6he. The last couple of kilometers I rode until I had to stop. And eventually walked the last 500 m into the city.<\/p>\n

From there everything was downhill to Graz. I rode along the river, flat and through parks and gardens, until I reach the hostel. Resting in a valley, Graz lends itself to cycling. Every street seems to have cycle lanes, and cyclists ride everywhere. I’ve never seen a city with this many cyclists. Cyclists ride literally bumper-to-bumper,<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

with parking to match. They all use hand signals because you have to!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The hostel, the typical big urban city hostel, offers laundry, which I desperately needed to do. After figuring it out myself, I got to help a group of Asian men do the same thing.<\/p>\n

Stepped out for a bite to eat before picking up my laundry. Thursday looks like a lot of up, headed for a pass I’ll reach on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took my time leaving the campground in Jennersdorf on Wednesday. The sunny morning gave me time to hang stuff up to dry. According to the GPX track, Graz was 72 km away, and I’d taken 16 km off of that by bicycling in the rain on Tuesday. 102 km later I pulled into the … Continue reading “240529-The walls closed in”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-touring"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3760"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3763,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3760\/revisions\/3763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}